Research in English: Brief Findings in Research

10-second review: Authentic Literacy activities. Explicit instruction in literary devices. Creative writing.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.”R Beach, et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2007), 188-227.

Summaries:

Authentic literacy activities: Developed an authentic rating sheet, and categorized the level of authenticity of numerous literacy activities. For example, an activity in which students generated questions based on hands-on experience, and then read informational texts to find answers to the questions, was rated high in authenticity. Suggests all teachers find ways to incorporate more authentic texts and purposes into their classroom instruction. NK Doke, et al. p. 122 (2006).

Explicit instruction in literary devices: Finds that learning to analyze literary devices in reading…fosters reflection about their own writing and awareness of how their narratives were constructed. R Cordon. P. 197 (2007).

Creative writing: Argues that in order to support children’s creative development as writers, teachers need opportunities to engage creatively as writers themselves. T Cremin. P. 201 (2006).

Research in English: Research Briefs.

10-second review: Regular class vs. reading intervention class. Training tutors for reading. Overcoming the achievement gap for low-income students.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” R Beach, et al. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2007), 188-227.

Summaries:

Regular reading class and reading intervention class: Same teacher for each. Findings: regular-reading class was student-centered. Reading intervention class was test-driven with less student participation. L Valli and M Chamnbliss. P. 189 (2007)

Training tutors for adult reading instruction. Concludes that tutor training did not always transfer to practice, and it did not always deal effectively with the complex topic of teaching reading to struggling adult readers. A Belzer. P. 191 (2006).

Achievement gap and family involvement in education. High family involvement negated the achievement gap evident for other low-income students. Recommends that family involvement in schools should be a primary goal of educators and policy makers looking to decrease the achievement gap. E Dearing, et al. p. 192 (2006).

Research in English: Linguistic Sexism

10-second review: Interesting examples of linguistic sexism in online grammar guides.

Title: “Where Is She? Gender Occurrences In On Line Grammar Guides.” Nicole Amare. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2007), pp. 165-187.

Criteria for Analyzing Linguistic Sexism

Generic he: When an employee asks for a raise, he should be brief.

Generic man: mankind, chairman, businessman, etc.

Titles, Labels and Names: stewardess, ballerina, actress, executrix, Miss, lady vols….

Gender Stereotypes: All girls cry at Chick Flicks, but men never cry.

Order of Mention: Nena and Arcturo, husband and wife, he or she….

Male-to-Female:  Measures how often female and male words appear in the text.

Comment: Gives many examples of linguistic sexism, some of which I was not sensitive to.

I still think most problems in maintaining neutral linguistic sexism is to avoid singular constructions like the following: Every one returned to their houses in which the singular subject does not agree with the plural pronoun. Instead, begin with the plural: The students returned to their schools.” In addition, avoids the ugly she/he, her/him, his/her etc. constructions. Also reads smoother. Useful article. RayS.

Resdearch in English: Attitude Toward learning

10-second review: “They do not have to accept the notion that they are an exception to the rule if they are successful in learning.”

Title: “ ‘Every City Has Soldiers’: The Role of Intergenerational Relationships in Participatory Literacy Communities.” M Fisher. Research in the Teaching of English (November 2009), 139-162.

Summary: Examples of group activities in which successful practitioners of literacy participated with the audience. The purpose of these groups was to demonstrate that literacy activities like poetry reading are within the reach of everyone in the community. They can be successful in literacy.

Comment: The 10-second review quote set me to thinking. Where and when does the culture of wanting to fail in school set in? It occurred to me in my high school years and I did not come out of it until I was a junior in college. For some reason, I decided to be “cool” and “cool” meant taking a nonchalant attitude toward school and learning.

I think the solution begins with goals or lack of them. When you don’t have any idea what you want to do with your life, you are not motivated to follow the prescribed curriculum.

When I began my career in teaching, my first high school English class stood out. I had these students as freshmen and then again as juniors. They were responsive, gobbled up everything I could teach them about spelling, writing, vocabulary and literature. When they graduated, I took the time to scan the information that accompanied every photo of the graduating seniors. I was astounded at how many of them could clearly state their career goals, whether nursing, journalism, engineering, farming, etc. If I had been asked that question at the end of high school, I could not have responded.

Fifty years later, I took out the yearbook from that first class in high school in preparation for their 50^th reunion and was equally astounded that so many of those students had achieved exactly what they set out to do. I think there’s a lesson in that. RayS.

Research in English: Adults Reading Aloud to 2- and 4-Year-Old Children

10-second review: Studied comments by adults and 3- and 4-year-old children when adults read storybooks and information books. Comments are longer by both adults and children when reading information books aloud.

Title: “Talk During Book Sharing Between Parents and Preschool children: A Comparison Between Storybook and Expository Book Conditions.” LH Price, A VanKleek, CT Huberty. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 171-194.

Quote: “…parents were more likely to read the entire text during storybook sharing than they were during expository book sharing. Expository book sharing was longer in duration and resulted in higher rates of extratextual utterances by both parents and children.”

Quote: “The mean length of parent extratextual utterances was significantly longer in the expository book condition, and their talk contained significantly greater vocabulary diversity. These findings indicate that the genre of books can influence the amount of talk that takes place during book sharing, and it can alter the content, vocabulary diversity, and sentence length of extratextual utterances.”

Comment: Reading aloud nonfiction books leads to longer and more diversified vocabulary in discussions by both adults and children. RayS.

Research in English: Some Examples of Critical Literacy

10 second review: “…we never observed her teaching the group or encouraging a child to question another’s perspective in their texts, challenging privileged lives portrayed in children’s books, critique stereotypes of people and places represented in texts, engage in multiple readings of a text from different perspectives or any other practices that might signify an incorporation of critical analysis in critical literacy.”

Title: “Engaging the Intellectual and the Moral in Critical Literacy Education: the Four-Year Journeys of Two Teachers from Teacher Education to Classroom Practice.” S Jones and G Enriques. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 145-168.

Comment: The authors look at English education as a method for achieving social justice through the classroom. There’s a thin line between propaganda, preaching and educating. RayS.

Research in English: Modeling

10-seocnd review: As teachers we need to recognize that our students have different values from ours. But this change in looking at our students has to begin in teacher education classes in which students have different values from teacher educators. How is that to be accomplished? By engaging in critical literacy. See an example in my next blog.

Title: “Engaging the Intellectual and the Moral in Critical Literacy Education: The Four-year Journeys of Two Teachers from Teacher Education to Classroom Practice.” S Jones and G Enriquez. Reading Research Quarterly (April/May/June 2009), 145-168.

Comment: In other words, teacher educators need to model how to deal with student differences and how to deal with them in a positive way. The method suggested is engaging in critical literacy. In the following blog, I give an example from the article. I think teacher educators need to model most of what occurs in their instruction. If teacher educators are going tell students to use the directed reading assignment, then the teacher educators need to use the directed reading assignment with their students. RayS.